Originally Posted by
graphs
Yeah, it seems logical to me. The catch is increasing your workload in reasonable increments. It's easy to want to bite off more than your body can handle.
I did a gradual ramp, but started at 15 hours with 60 minutes of high-SST/low zone 4 work 3x a week. After the first four week cycle, I went into the second block doing the 5-6 hour/300+ tss rides once a week (and 60 minutes of high-SST/low zone 4 work 2x a week). The first couple of long rides like that left me feeling wiped out. But then they were all good as I adapted to them. The day after the long ride consisted of a 60-90 minute recovery ride, and the day after that was an off day.
The last block ramped the hours up to a max of 21 (19, 20, 21) and I backed off the intensity a bit last week until the weekend, where I did a 5.5 hour mountain bike "race" backed up with a 5 hour zone 2 ride the following day. I was sore until Wednesday, but my legs feel great today and my threshold power is better than it's ever been. Days in between were spent doing recovery rides, with one dedicated Zone 2 ride a week.
It was an interesting 12 week experiment, and given that my priority "A" race for the season is in October, it gave me an opportunity to try something different and if it turned out to be a failure I always had time to re-tool to fix it up. I posted most of my workouts in the training status, just didn't really tell many people what I was up to.
My last 20' field test was in the mid-350s, so I'm estimating my threshold in the 330s right now. I can reliably do 3x20's @ 330 without too much trouble. But, I don't have much high end since I haven't really done any vo2 work. I estimated my threshold in the 300-305 range when I started the experiment, but I've previously been as high as 320-325, so I've only "gained" 10w over my previous best. BUT, I don't even feel like I'm close to a peak right now, and haven't really done anything that redlines me until yesterday when I did a 5' test.
The next question will be to see how long I can maintain it... I'm now going to be doing a more traditional "build" series with more muscle strength work for the next two blocks, while racing for training every weekend for some higher intensity. The tough part will be the recovery over the next window.